


A Measure of Seconds

by aegistheia



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Gen, Love, Past Child Neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegistheia/pseuds/aegistheia
Summary: What starts out as an ordinary case of returning a youkai’s name gets complicated fast when they find out just how many – and which – players are involved.“Why do we love, child?”





	A Measure of Seconds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alessandriana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
>  **Warnings:** trauma resulting from past child neglect will be described or discussed. Feel free to wait until the story is de-anoned to message me for details in case you’d like a description of what gets mentioned and/or explored; alternatively, there is a brief summary of themes in the endnote. Take care of yourselves. ♥

It starts like any other case: under a waxing moon, surrounded by trees, and being chased by an angry youkai.

It would be really nice, Takashi reflects dourly, if he didn’t always get so much cardio exercise with the Book.  His abysmal performance on the run track is actually starting to improve.

He ducks as the youkai makes another screeching dive.  Nyanko-sensei roars up behind him, snapping teeth as long as his arms at the streams of white paper.  His youkai form is a fearsome sight, silhouetted against the moon and the crumbling architecture of the plant-covered shrine, and Takashi would appreciate it more if he weren’t so breathless from the evasions.

“Please calm down!” he shouts.  “I can’t figure out what your name is if you won’t give me time to find you in the Book!”

“Reasoning with them won’t help now!” Nyanko-sensei bellows.

 _Youkai_ : supernatural beings that he’s been able to see since he could remember.  He’s only seen more when he inherited the Book of Friends, a collection of youkai’s names gathered by his, ah, overly assertive grandmother Reiko.  He’s been diligently returning names to their proper owners with Nyanko-sensei’s supervision and occasional help, and along the way experienced so much more than he’d ever expected.

Such as tonight.  He braces himself as the blank white mask faces him, paper streams rustling like scales, and rushes him again.  So it’s another surprise when he gets the breath knocked straight out of him from a blow to his left, making him stumble sideways—

“That’s enough,” Nyanko-sensei snarls, materializing behind his back faster than thought.  Next thing Takashi knows, he’s lifted clear out of the forest and swinging in the air as Nyanko-sensei lopes over the treetops.

Takashi twists in his jaws.  “Sensei!  Don’t— what if they follow us back to the Fujiwara household—”

“Then I will eat them, and they will deserve to be eaten.  We’re done here tonight, Natsume.  We’re not going to get anywhere further checking out Misuzu’s tip, and you are weaker than a toddler taking his first step.”

Takashi settles, with some resignation, into the dangle.  He can never shake the feeling that Nyanko-sensei actually likes scruffing him like a kitten sometimes.  “I guess,” he says reluctantly.  He _is_ tired from the physics unit exam just this morning.  “But we can’t leave this alone, sensei.  Misuzu entrusted us with this investigation.  I have to come back.”

Nyanko-sensei sets him down gently at the edge of the forest, just out of direct line of sight from the _torii_ that marked the overgrown path from the streets, and transforms with a puff.  “Only after you feed yourself and sleep,” he declares, settling imperiously into Takashi’s arms.  “You’re going to get eaten yourself, in this useless state, and then the Book will pass onto _me_ , and—”

Takashi sighs.  “Yes, yes, sensei.  It’s time for dinner.”  And time for a lot of new things too, now that a term is ending.  He’ll have to pack new school supplies before bed.

 

\-----

 

“Congratulations for finishing your exam successfully yesterday!” Shiragawa-sensei says cheerfully. She spins around to face the class, chalk thrust out triumphantly.  “Today, we will start our new unit: gravity! Now, we won’t go too far, since it can get very tangled.”

Yakima gasps.  “Quantum entanglement!”

“Time dilation!” agrees Honda.

Eboshi frowns and turns to Ishizawa.  “What’s time dilation?”

“I think it’s part of Einstein’s theory,” Ishizawa opines.  She glances over her shoulder at Yanagisawa.  “Right?  When we looked at _A Brief History of Time?_ ”

Yanagisawa purses her lips.  “I think it was Hawking-sensei’s sequel that talked about it.  The shorter one, what’s it called.”

“ _A Briefer History of Time_.”

“That one.”

“Class!”  Shiragawa-sensei’s voice snaps through the room like a whip, more effective than any ruler slaps against a desk.  “If we may focus.”

“Sensei!”  Eboshi’s hand shoots up.  “Can we clear this up first?  What’s time dilation?”

By then, even Nishimura looks interested.  Shiragawa-sensei glances around the room with a raised eyebrow.  “If we finish our material early maybe I can give you a crash course tomorrow.  That means we might have to have a shorter and therefore faster lecture, so get your pencils ready!”

 

\-----

 

Because he “can’t leave well enough alone,” as Nyanko-sensei had grumbled, Takashi heads back to the abandoned shrine again that very afternoon.

“What, you don’t have homework?” he’d sniped.

“New unit, so no,” Takashi’d shot back, and that was that.

Nyanko-sensei is deeply unhappy about it, and expresses his displeasure in the form of stalking after him in his full youkai form so he could purportedly object louder.  “It’s not as though the youkai will suffer any ill effects if we wait one more night,” he complains, “It’s already waited, what, at least thirty years?  We could have had fresh dango from Kanashiragiya.  They just made a fresh batch.  If only your nose wasn’t so useless as to not smell it right on our way over—”

“We’ll get some on our way back, sensei.  Youkai first.  I’m sure they’ll want their name back as soon as possible.”

“One day your trouble-seeking attitude really will get you eaten, stupid human child.”

“I’m sure I’m not that delicious, sensei.”

“How would you know?  It’s not like you’re the one who eats humans.”

“I mean, you’re choosing odango over me right now, so...”

They bicker comfortably on the hike; the path is a gentle, meandering little thing that is easy on the knees and makes him prone to losing track of time.  Eventually Nyanko-sensei overtakes Takashi to lead the way.  Takashi lets him, so really, it’s his own fault that he runs straight into a furry rump when Nyanko-sensei stops all of a sudden.

“What—”

He chokes, struggling for air, as Nyanko-sensei hauls him at least ten metres straight up in time to miss the crashing tackle of the paper youkai.  Takashi barely catches his balance as Nyanko-sensei drops him onto his feet, and tackles the youkai through the trees.

He takes a deep breath, then another, slower one when his side prickles.  That strange chill is back again, trickling against his arm, the same chill that heralded the sideways blow.  Something about last night was different than their previous cases.  What if—

Nyanko-sensei snarls as he’s bowled over right in front of him.  Takashi isn’t certain, because he’s too busy being knocked over backwards.  He struggles upright, gasping, and leaps on the hunch.

“Do you want your name back, too?” he calls.  “If you do, then don’t—”

He ducks another cool rush, then grits his teeth, spins, and swings a tight right hook out just as the tug pulls him across the path.  The surprised huff of pain is more gratifying than he’d like to admit.

“Don’t hit me when I’m trying to chat with you!” he barks.

To his right, the rustling and thumping die in a heartbeat.  In the next, pure malevolence bears down at him with a pressure so intense he can’t— _move_ —

A chill ripple, a flowing wall solidifying to ice—

Perfumed kimono envelops him, and he is borne high above the confusing mix of intents and spiritual presences.  “My,” Hinoe coos, “What’s this?  Natsume, in danger?  Madara, you’re losing your touch.”

“Hinoe!” Takashi clutches at her arm; it is like iron across his chest, a strange contrast to the softness of her _michiyuki_ against his back.  “Why are you here?”

“I knew you’d be here, Natsume.”

“How— did Misuzu—”

Hinoe settles him just beyond the newly-created clearing with a sniff.  “Misuzu didn’t need to tell me anything.  Half the forest knows you’re here.  The other half are the ones who are deaf or insensitive to spiritual auras.”  She gives him a quick once-over, lips puckering at the state of his clothing.  “You really don’t know how much of a mess you and Madara have been stirring up, do you?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.  It’s not like you’re the one kicking up the fuss.”  She eyes the writhing mass of paper slips adorning the youkai and the hissing bristle of fur that is Nyanko-sensei.  “Finish it up, Madara, before Natsume gets hurt.”

“Ah!”  Takashi turns to her in a flash of inspiration.  “Hinoe, do you think you could help us calm it down?  I think it wants its name back, and I can’t really work when I keep having to duck.”

Hinoe stares at him, then pulls him aside as Nyanko-sensei skids across the grass.  “Soft as always,” she remarks.  “You’re absolutely nothing like my darling Reiko, and yet I can’t help but come back, time after time—”

“Maybe we can reminisce later?” Takashi yelps, stumbling back as Nyanko-sensei tumbles past again, wrapped in streams of paper.  The cool feeling descends around him again.

Hinoe casts an appraising eye around them, then again at Nyanko-sensei.  “Madara, can you pin the creature?”

“I’m a little busy here!”

“This is what happens when you depend on someone useless like that one,” Hinoe mutters.  “He’ll always take too long.  I guess we’ll have to wait out the temper tantrum first before we can do anything—”

The air shivers around them, then warms.  A second later, the youkai makes a sound like an ancient tree falling, and streaks skyward.  Suddenly bereft of his opponent, Nyanko-sensei flips and lands on his back with a squeak and an ungraceful _thump_.

The silence settles around them like a timid blanket.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Hinoe says finally.  “Are you all right, Natsume?”

“Fine.”  He’ll stop shaking eventually.  He’s just never liked the feeling of being held down.  Never will.

Hinoe gives him a doubtful look, but lets go of his shoulder.  “Shall I escort you off the mountain?  Ooh, I can carry you down—”

“That’s excessive, Hinoe.  Natsume can walk.”

Takashi smiles encouragingly when she looks him over again.  “It’s all right, Hinoe.  A stroll will help clear my head.  I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

Still, she hovers until they are at the _torii_.  After sending her off, he hesitates, then asks, “did you feel more than one presence?”

Nyanko-sensei huffs, then shrinks into his little form behind him.  “There were two,” he confirms, trotting through the foliage much more quietly than before.  Though with the ruckus they’d been raising these last two nights in a row, Takashi would be surprised if any youkai would dare to approach them now.  “Though only one of them was really aggressive about approaching you.”

Takashi sighs, brushing a branch away from his face.  He’s right; if he hadn’t been knocked over, he’d have been slammed into the ground with Sensei.  “I didn’t want to ask Hinoe until I was sure.  I guess we’ll look into it tomorrow.”

Nyanko-sensei grumbles again sotto voce, but Takashi ignores him with the ease of extensive practice.  As a concession (and light bribe), they do stop by Kanashiragiya for dango, and though Nyanko-sensei says it isn’t the same, he is content to munch in mollified quiet in Takashi’s arms for the rest of the trip home.

 

\-----

 

“Time dilation!” Taki says.  She bounces on the balls of her feet, then turns to walk backwards.  “That sounds so cool.”

“It does,” Tanuma agrees, smiling.  “That people could experience time pass at different speeds?  Super twisty for the brain.”

“ _So cool_ ,” she repeats in English, in evident preparation for their study session.  “I wonder how that feels like.”

“Probably less weird than we’d expect.”  Tanuma glances at him.  “What did you think?”

Takashi smiles.  “Of course time can pass differently for different people.  Time can pass differently for the same person at different points of their life, too.”

Taki blinks.  “I—”  She exchanges a look with Tanuma, then flips back around.  “I think I know what you mean, Natsume-kun.”

Yeah.  She would know.  And maybe even Tanuma would too, the way seconds stretch and minutes compress within that aimless, drifting feeling when nothing in the world is right, and nothing you give can gain you an anchor that keeps you moored despite your very best efforts...  Grief as a gravity well might not be quantifiable in formulaic terms of relativity, but it’s intimately human, and a constant in his memories.  No, gravitational time dilation is not a foreign concept at all.

“Natsume Takashi-dono?”

They turn as one.  The woman behind them looks middle-aged, suit immaculately pressed, but her hair, tied back neatly in a high ponytail, is more silver than black.  She bows.  “I am Eishige Umeka.  Matoba-sama recommended your service to me.  I hope you have a moment?”

Takashi steps in front of Tanuma and Taki.  “What do you want?”  It comes out a lot less friendly that he’d been trying for.

“Our family has need of your powers.”

“I don’t perform exorcisms.  Have you asked around?  There are many famous exorcist families.”

“You misunderstand.”  Eishige Umeka’s mouth trembles.  “It is not a youkai for which we need help.  It is a yuurei.”

“Yuurei?  I don’t really work with human ghosts either.”

She bows again.  “I would not ask if you had not already encountered the ghost, Natsume-dono.”

Takashi blinks.  Taki and Tanuma turn to look at him.  Takashi shoots them an equally nonplussed glance, and says, “I think we’d better talk.”

 

\-----

 

“The ghost is of my sister, Eishige Touka.”  Eishige Umeka sips at her tea delicately, but her gaze is very far away.  She does not seem to take any notice of Taki’s distrustful glance from across the café.  In direct contrast, Tanuma is stolidly nursing his drink.  Takashi envies his calm.  “She passed away fifty years ago.

“We did not realize at the time, but after her death, I found a letter she had written to me to be read after her death.  In it, she described her lover, and how she wanted to spend eternity with it.”  She swallows, and her hands tremble.  “It was not stated, but spirituality runs through our family strongly enough that I knew that her lover was a youkai.”

Takashi nearly spits his tea.  “Wait, what?”

“Our family descended from a side branch of a major exorcist clan.  We inherited the anti- _youkai_ thinking.  A relationship with a youkai would have been forbidden.  I am afraid that she died bewitched by the youkai with which she thinks she is in love.  I need you to help dispel the youkai’s enchantment on her ghost, and help her move on.”

“How did you even know I had interacted with your sister’s ghost?”

The grey of Eishige Umeka’s eyes flick up in a flash of steel.  Suddenly the cool feeling is wrapping around him again, like a waterfall running down his back.  “There are traces on you that I can feel.  I can recognize my sister anywhere.”

“I can’t promise I’ll be able to anything about the spell,” Takashi says cautiously, “I’ll have to find the youkai before I find your sister, and I don’t even know what youkai this is.”

The corner of her mouth flickers.  “No, but your grandmother did.”

It takes everything to keep his reaction locked down to a moment of hesitation.  “How would you know about that?” he asks as calmly as he can manage.

“A branch family will still have access to the main clan’s library, and our archivist is the best in Kansai when it comes to recording youkai interactions.  We know Natsume Reiko has kept good written records about her adventures, and we know they crossed paths years ago.  Our scrolls do not lie.”

 _That’s a novel way of describing the Book of Friends_ , he thinks wildly.  Eishige Umeka leans close, sliding over a business card, and he braces himself.

Her voice drops.  “Please.  Set my sister free.”

 

\-----

 

“You _agreed_ to this?” Nyanko-sensei yelps, dropping his squid afternoon snack.

Hinoe smirks at Nyanko-sensei as he flops onto his back in an overdramatic display of despair.  “Aren’t you glad Natsume had the foresight to invite me along, hmm?  I even gathered my rarest scrolls for tonight.”

Takashi stares mournfully at the grilled squid on his bedroom floor.  Yet another grease stain to explain away...  If only he were as undemonstrative as Taki and Tanuma upon taking the news.  “Well, I think we’ve already run into her, so it’s not like I can say no to her face—”

“Of course you can, you fool!  All you have to do is open your mouth and say, ‘no!’”  Nyanko-sensei rolls across the floor.  “She knew of Reiko, Natsume!  Her family probably knows about the Book!  And Matoba is involved!  What if this is a trap?  What am I going to do with you!”

“Come with me like you usually do?” Takashi tries.

“I wouldn’t have to come if you thought your actions through!”

“Don’t be a killjoy, Madara,” Hinoe huffs.  She blows a stream of smoke into Nyanko-sensei’s face.  “Don’t worry, Natsume,” she croons, “I’ll be there.  If this ghost is still being cursed into false love, I probably have a scroll to help break it.  Along with enough energy as well,” she adds, eyeing Takashi rather more judgementally than he thinks is warranted.  “I know you’ve grown stronger, but a name release and a spell-breaking in one evening is no easy feat, even for the simplest of curses.  And a curse that can last past a death into a haunting is a powerful one.”

“But that’s why I have you, Hinoe,” he says, and yelps when she tackles him to the floor in an enthusiastic display of affection.  She apologizes by helping him sneak his stuffed schoolbag out his bedroom window after dinner while he makes excuses for a nighttime excursion for Tanuma (bless Tanuma for covering), so that’s an acceptable outcome.

 

\-----

 

The youkai must have been tracking them, because they are ambushed five scarce minutes past the _torii_.  Takashi feels less bad about not waiting for Taki to look up ghost-seeing circles from her family’s onmyouji texts.  Who knows how close the youkai could have come by tomorrow—

“Eishige Touka-san!” Takashi calls, then takes a deep breath as Hinoe yanks him up a tree to allow Nyanko-sensei more room to work.

The leaves ice over around them.

“I thought so,” Hinoe says, and spits out the incantation without missing a beat as she unfurls a scroll from her sleeve.  A short cry, and the chill air condenses to the form of a beautiful young woman the spitting image of Eishige Umeka at the full bloom of her youth, dressed in a white kimono decorated with sprays of bamboo.

“We finally meet,” Hinoe says with grim satisfaction, “interloper.”

“Eishige Touka-san?” Takashi asks over Hinoe’s shoulder.

Eishige Touka’s struggling around the binding scroll almost knocks the three of them off their branch.  “Yes!  Please release me, or they will panic, and I can’t protect you like this—”

As if her words were a summon, the paper youkai bays.  The moment its focus lands on them is palpable; its rage is a bonfire on his skin.  Takashi flinches back on instinct, and pitches himself out of the tree.

“No!” Eishige Touka screams.  “I’m safe!  My love, he’s trying to help us!”

Hinoe lunges, free hand outstretched— misses his hand—

Plunging, curled around his schoolbag and the Book, Takashi can only brace himself—

Paper streams, wrapping around him, curling around his torso, his hips, pushing him up—

Takashi seizes a breath, and a paper stream curls around his eyes—

 

\-----

 

_Eishige Touka, on a bridge over a calm stream, smiling up at—_

_Warmth, on the hand, the shoulder, the chest—_

_“I don’t want to leave,” Eishige Touko sobs, burying her tears into yielding paper as the fireflies rise around them, “I don’t want to leave you, not ever—”_

_Eishige Touka, scrolls spread about her as her skin pales, as her cheeks hollow, as the bones of her wrists sharpen and refine themselves as they peek through her sleeves, looking up with burning eyes and snarling, “I’m not giving up, don’t you dare give up on us—”_

_Streams of paper, uncurling from cold hands—_

_A flash of light, devastation—_

_The choking charcoal of grief in the flickering lantern-lights—_

 

\-----

 

“Natsume!”

Paper tears around him; Takashi finds himself snugged in Nyanko-sensei’s mouth as they rear and flip in the air.

“Sensei,” he gasps, still caught in the massive emotional swell of the youkai’s memories, “sensei, put me down, I can find its name—”

“Reckless child,” Nyanko-sensei chides, but sets him down on the forest loam.  Eishige Touka, untangled from Hinoe’s scroll, has descended to lay a hand on the paper youkai.  Takashi scrambles for the Book; he has scarcely laid hands upon it before it is already flying open, a single page leafed to vertical position and ready for plucking.

But first, he has to make sure.  “Eishige Touka-san,” he says, “we need to check to make sure you’re not enchanted, okay?”

The youkai hisses, paper rustling along its body in a menacing wave as it wraps around Eishige Touka.  She places a quelling hand into what must be the shoulder under the mass of paper.  “No, my love.  Stop.  There is no spell on me,” says the ghost, looking up at them with some resignation, “but you may check.”

“Thank you.  Hinoe, please,” he calls.

Hinoe is frowning down at the youkai and ghost, having also jumped down to ground level.  “I don’t think you’re cursed either,” she opines, “but it won’t hurt you if I cast, hmmm... this one.  Give me a moment.”

With another flare of scrolls, she is chanting again.  The power swells in the clearing as the slick syllables of the spell-breaker crack through the night, then collapses into itself.  “Clear,” she confirms.

Takashi sighs.  “Thank you.”  He folds the sheet, and closes his eyes.

 

\-----

 

_—I won’t leave you—_

_“Move out of my way, youkai.  Or I’ll challenge you to a game.”_

_Won’t move.  Won’t lose, can’t lose any more—_

_—loss—_

_—blankness, stripped—_

_—incandescent joy, a burn of unbridled emotion so pure they could weep—_

_Plum blossoms blooming in the frosted garden as the coolness settles around them, as they wait, and wait, and wait—_

 

\-----

 

“ _Tsukiyuuno_ ,” he breathes, and their name flows free in a graceful swirl of ink through the purpling sky.

It scribes onto the nose and chin of the youkai’s mask.  The papers shiver, then still.  Eishige Touka touches the mask, fingers tracing down the markings with a gentleness so intimate that Takashi’s ears burn red.

“No wonder I didn’t react to you right away,” Hinoe remarks as she walks close.  “You were stealing Natsume’s spiritual power to strengthen yourself, weren’t you?  And since you didn’t mean us any harm, there was no malice to which I’d react.”

“Yes.  I apologize,” says Eishige Touka, turning around and bowing.  “I had hoped you would not be injured when my love expressed their displeasure, but I didn’t have enough power to do more than move you out of the way until I came nearer to you.”

“You would have had no power at all as a new ghost,” Nyanko-sensei murmurs, “except for the emotions that drove you.”

“I was so angry, and so despairing, that I lost myself.  I could not protect anyone after I died,” Eishige Touka admits, shoulders slumping.  “By the time I was able to regain my sense of self and find my love, their name had already been sealed away.”

“Because they were guarding your grave,” Takashi says, throat so dry he could barely speak, “and refused to move away from the challenger.”

“Yes.  So we waited together for me to gain strength, and for the challenger to come back...”

_But Reiko never comes back._

“How did you gain strength?”

She smiles at that.  “My sister prayed for me every day.  Our spiritual auras feel similar, don’t they?  I can sense her on you.”  She reaches out and dislodges a peach blossom from his schoolbag, the same pocket he’d placed Eishige Umeka’s name card.  “She believes me bewitched, doesn’t she?”

“She thought you hadn’t moved on because you were tricked into staying.”

Eishige Touka shakes her head.  “I chose to stay.  The love of my life remains here.  So I will, too.”

Nyanko-sensei snorts.  “You would give up the cycle of life and death for this?  Reject moving on and corrupt yourself into remaining on this realm for eternity?”

She smiles again, melancholy.  “But I will pay, one way or another.  If I move on, I will lose my love.  If I stay, I will lose the peace to rest with my family, and all who will follow: all my ancestors and descendants, gone and out of my reach.  That is the choice I must make.

“But I believe that peace is worth giving up, for this second chance together.  This, too, is a form of happiness.”

Tsukiyuuno circles around her in a rustle of scaled white paper, bone-white mask staring out at them without inflection or emotion.  But there is no mistaking the gentleness with which they touch Eishige Touka’s spirit, the way the paper strips trail on her arms and neck with longing.

“This is our second chance.  We never thought we’d get one, and we may not ever get a third one.  I won’t let go this time.  I won’t.”

“Dedicating your desires after death to something like this is for keeps,” Nyanko-sensei rumbles, “do you realize?  This is not something you can reverse within a human lifetime if you regret it or something.  If you choose to haunt a youkai, you will never move on.  You will be in this world, in this existence, forever.”

Forever...

“Yes.  I am sure.”

“Lucky you, Tsukiyuuno,” Hinoe snips, almost harsh.  Her face is like stone, like a lightning storm fit to burst.  “Not all humans choose to give up their humanity for love.  It will not be easy to forget human rules, do you understand?”

“No.  But I will find out with my love by my side without complaint.”

Hinoe sighs, and she looks very tired all of a sudden.  Takashi tears his gaze away to find Eishige Touka looking at him again.  “Thank you for releasing my love from your command, and giving me the strength to materialize.  I don’t know how to repay you.”

“You don’t need to.  Your sister asked...”

“Ah!  My cute Umeboshi...  I miss her dearly.  But I cannot go near my old home, or I will be banished.  Spirits know that Obon was hard enough...”

Takashi licks his lips.  “I can carry a message to her for you,” he offers.

Eishige Touka smiles, cupping her hands together as they start to glow.  “Thank you, descendent of Natsume Reiko.”

He jerks his gaze back up to meet hers, eyes wide.  “I— uh.”

Her smile turns impish.  “Your retainers yelled your name enough times.  It’s not like it’s a secret.”

Nyanko-sensei roars indignantly.  “This brat is mine, you confused harpy—”

She ignores him with aplomb.  “Can you please give this to my sister?”  He closes his fingers around the sprig of plum blossoms she’d left in his hand, tied with a paper strip from Tsukiyuuno.  “She will know, and understand.”

“You won’t miss her?”

“Of course I will.  She is my sister, and the most precious of my family amongst all others.”

Takashi opens his mouth, then closes it.  His words have completely deserted him; he can only look down at the flowers, eye stinging.

A paper-streaked hand touches his; another cups his chin and tilts his head up.  “Why do we love, child?”

He shakes his head, bereft.

“We love, in spite of all the pain and the suffering, because we cannot stand to be alone.  This is true of humans, and of youkai as well.  Because we cannot help it.”

She lets him go, turns shining eyes towards Tsukiyuuno and tangles her fingers into the waving strips. “This is my choice to make. It is not one I expect you to understand, Natsume Takashi-dono, or indeed anyone else, now or ever. But I am happy, and I am free, and I will not be alone. I won’t go back.” She smiles, brilliant with her joy and her sadness. “Do not cry for me! We may yet meet again. Until next time.”

Tsukiyuuno shuffles their paper strips, then stretches them wide like wings, like ofuda.  A flare of paper, and they are alone on the forest path.

“Well,” Nyanko-sensei says at length, “we’d better move if we want to get off the forest path before the flashlight battery dies.”

“We haven’t even turned it on yet,” Takashi objects automatically, but it’s an empty protest and even he can hear it.  He sighs.  “I’ll arrange a meeting with Eishige Umeka-san tomorrow.  I—”

He barely manages to step close enough to a tree before his knees give out.  Nyanko-sensei is underneath him instantly, hissing with displeasure.  “Climb on.  We’re not walking through the forest like this, you’re going to break your neck.”

Takashi, for the lack of a better word, squirms onto his back.  “Thank you, sensei,” he murmurs tiredly.  “Hinoe, thank you too.  You can go—”

“I’m coming with you,” Hinoe says with finality.  “Tonight, and tomorrow.  Don’t argue, Natsume.  Save your energy for making that meeting with the woman tomorrow.”

 

\-----

 

She stands guard all night at the Fujiwara’s household.  Takashi has no energy to protest, and if he were to be honest, no desire to actually do so either.

 

\-----

 

“I see,” Eishige Umeka says, back in the café when they’d first talked.  She hadn’t blinked when Takashi had come to meet her with Nyanko-sensei at his feet and Hinoe over his shoulder, and not for the first time he wonders what it would have been like, to grow up in a family that sees powerful _youkai_ on Sunday afternoons as ordinary like the Eishige.  Not in one as heavy-handed as the ancient Matoba; not in one as despairing as the fading Natori.  An environment with a lighter burden, on the fringes of the borders, neither central nor thoroughly excluded.

As if there could ever be a middle ground to seeing youkai...

She twists the branch of plum blossoms around again.  It had remained tipped with unseasonal frost all night.  But the moment Eishige Umeka had touched the branch, the ice had sublimated within seconds, and she had remained silent for minutes before speaking again.

“So my sister had chosen it of her own free will.”  She sighs.  She plucks the strip of paper from Tsukiyuuno from the branch.  Takashi can’t help but jump when it flares in a great gout of flame.  “I’m glad.  I’m so glad...”

Hinoe watches her, uncharacteristically silent.

“What will you do?” Takashi ventures.  “Will you have the youkai exorcised?  Because it’s not really... hurting people.”

“No.”  She stares into the distance, tears in her eyes.  “No.  Touka sounds happy with them, and safe.  I will not have my family ruin that.  I guess this means I will have to let her go, then.”

“What— she’s your sister, isn’t she?  Your twin?  How...”

How indeed.  His words fail him completely.

Eishige Umeka purses her lips.  “She is my twin sister, and dearer to me than all others.  I love her.  No matter what she chooses.  And if she is happier by leaving the human world for eternity, then so be it.”

Takashi stares at her, lost.

She stands and bows.  “I thank you for your aid.  Please accept this as payment for your service.”

Takashi stares at the presented envelope and the wrapped box of mochi.  He doesn’t recognize the store, but the paper is thick and the folds so precise that it cuts at the eyes.  “I can’t— I don’t take—”

“Then simply as a compliment of your skills.  I insist, Natsume-dono.  Spiritual work is tiring.  Do not neglect yourself.”

He can’t— his mind is spinning too fast, like a top about to flip.  “Can I ask you a question?” he blurts.

Eishige Umeka blinks down at him.  “Certainly.”

“You’re not— angry at her?”  _For leaving you behind, for abandoning a loving family, for..._   “Oh!  Oh, um, I know this was very personal, so you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to...”

Her gaze gentles.  “No, I’m not angry.  This is how our love works, Natsume-dono.  Besides, I still have what is left of my lifetime to meet her here, in this world, before I pass away and move on myself.  That is short for coming to terms, but it is not nothing.”

“And your family?”

“Shall earn the right to know of her happiness when they have kinder words to say about a relationship with a youkai that is not one of servitude.  She— They deserve this much.”  She bows again.  “Have a lovely evening.”

Numb, he leans back in the chair and watches her leave with half-blind eyes.  He can barely feel Nyanko-sensei crawl into his lap.

“Natsume,” Nyanko-sensei says, “Natsume.”

Takashi’s hand begins to pet Nyanko-sensei without him really making a decision about it.

“I can’t do anything more for any of them, can I?” he says.  His voice sounds very far away.

“No.”

Nyanko-sensei is purring, very softly, like a rusty engine.  He must have learned it from the local cats.

“Natsume.”  Hinoe folds herself over him.  “Natsume, are you all right?”

“I’m glad they found closure,” he says, still as if from a great distance, “but I don’t understand.  I can’t even imagine...”

How far does eternity stretch?  How do the senses dilate to the point where time means everything beside one person, and yet nothing in the absence of another?  How...

“Won’t the family eventually hunt Eishige Touka’s ghost down, if she is from an exorcist clan?”

“Probably,” Hinoe agrees.  “But a resourceful and protective woman like Eishige Umeka will probably make tracing them very difficult for a little while.  After that, well, it’ll be problem for the dwellers of the youkai world.  But that’s what the ghost accepted when she rejected the human world.”

‘A little while’ probably quantified as a full human lifespan or two for youkai like them.  Takashi nods, then sighs.  “Will you miss me when I am gone, Nyanko-sensei?”

Nyanko-sensei stares up at him, then harrumphs. “It is very hard to miss humans, Natsume.”

“Madara!” snaps Hinoe.  “Forgive him, Natsume.  He has no grasp of vocabulary.  He does not mean he will not miss you.  He— oh!”  She glares at Nyanko-sensei.  “He will explain himself later.  This is not something I can do for you, Madara.”

“Hinoe,” Nyanko-sensei growls.

“You owe him,” she growls right back.  “I don’t care how bad you are at it.  You were not good with Reiko, and now you need to make up for it with Takashi.”

“This kind of thing cannot be made up.”

“Then it’s just as well you don’t have to do that with Natsume then, no?” she says tartly.  “Since you never did it with Reiko to begin with.  Spirits, Madara, you are truly useless.  Take him home.”

Takashi stirs.  “But the payment—”

“The payment can wait one more day, can’t it?  It’s not as though it will expire tonight.”  Hinoe’s expression softens, and she adds, not unkindly, “I’ll debrief Misuzu. Let your people take care of you.  Go home.”

So Takashi leaves.

 

\-----

 

“This is not the direction to home, Natsume,” Nyanko-sensei observes.

“No.”

“Natsume...”

“I need answers if I want to sleep tonight, sensei.”

Nyanko-sensei eyes him, but deigns to follow him silently through the journey to his destination, the _genkan_ and his request for an audience, and their seating in a tea room.  He doesn’t even twitch when Matoba Seiji slides the _shouji_ open after what could have been minutes later, hours later.  Takashi spares a brief moment to wonder at it, then focuses his attention.

“Natsume Takashi-kun,” Matoba Seiji says with his typical thin-lipped smile.  “A rare sight indeed, and a happy coincidence that my leisure intersects with your visit.  To what do I owe the grace of your willing presence?”

“Why didn’t you refer Eishige Umeka-san’s case to Natori-san?” Takashi says without preamble.  “The youkai was made primarily of paper.  You had to know that when she described her case to you.”

Matoba Seiji raises an eyebrow.  “It’s precisely because it’s made of paper that I didn’t refer this case to Natori.  If he were available to begin with.  One fights fire with water, Natsume Takashi-kun.  Direct tests of strength do not an efficient practice make.”

“She asked for an exorcism.”

“And if it wasn’t going to be just an exorcism?”

“You—”  Takashi stops, and takes a deep breath, counting backwards from ten.  The afternoon sun lights Matoba Seiji’s sleeve aflame.  It’s too soon, after watching Tsukiyuuno’s paper slip burn in Eishige Umeka’s hand.  “Exactly how much did you know about this case that you didn’t bother to share with me?”

“Nothing important that she didn’t tell you herself.”

“Then why,” Takashi growls, “did you send it to me, and what made you so certain that I would accept it?”

Matoba Seiji sips his tea and pins him with an expressionless stare.  “You agreed to be of help to the Matoba clan,” he finally says, “and though heart-wrenching, this case posed little overall concern to our business.  It seemed like a good fit for you and your potential.  As for accepting...  Your heart bleeds, Natsume Takashi-kun.  There was little chance that you’d refuse it.”

“And if I did?”

“Then Eishige Umeka-san’s case would have remained unsolved until she found a adequate practitioner to meet her needs.”

Takashi grits his teeth.  He pushes the unopened envelope and mochi across the table.  “I am not part of your exorcist world.  You should take this and leave me alone next time.”

Matoba Seiji casts a swift glance at the package, and doesn’t move a muscle.  “The payment is yours by right.  Do as you wish with it.”

“I don’t take payments—”

“Use it to provide for your family and friends.  Give the mochi to Eishige Touka as an offering.  Donate the fee.  There are many ways to spend what you have received; giving it to the Matoba clan is not efficient.  It has no use for it.”

“This is more your thing, isn’t it?  The way of exorcists.  I’m not one...”

The flinty gaze narrows.  “You chose, of your own volition, to solve this case.  As you have said, you are not of the Matoba clan.  Therefore, your conditions of service is in direct negotiation with your client, not with me or mine.  If you truly did not intend to take payment, then don’t blame me for your lack of will.”

Takashi’s chest tightens as he grasps for balance in the rarefying air.  “I don’t want to be involved in your cases like this ever again,” he hears himself say in a voice he can’t recognize.  “Not ever like this, again, going in blind and deaf and crippled of context.”  _Used._

Matoba Seiji’s gaze is very even, and would have been very hard to hold if Takashi were less tired.  As it were, he stares right back, feeling the emotions roil beneath his skin like a restless sea.  “Very well,” he says after time stretches thin between them, “should there be a similar referral situation in the future, one of mine will contact and debrief you before negotiations commence.”  He smiles again, fast as a scythe.  “Know that these accommodations are not commonly made.  Dealings with youkai cross over with some very competitive markets.  Time is of the essence in fields like these.”

He... he can’t do this.  Not right now.  Not with his head pounding and his heart faring only slightly better.  Maybe Hinoe had a point.  “I thank you for your generous attention,” he says with as much formality as he can summon, then sighs.  “I need to go home now.”

Matoba Seiji nods.  Takashi is almost at the door, Nyanko-sensei still silent at his feet, when the man speaks again.  “A word of advice, if you will, Natsume Takashi-kun.  You should never offer your service for free.”  He tilts his head until his hair falls away from the seal across his right eye.  The smile is still on his face, but there is no humour in it anymore.  “There is always a price to pay in this world.  If your client does not pay it, then you will pay in their stead.  Have a care for how the balance swings.”

 

\-----

 

They are sitting in Takashi’s bedroom, staring out the window and watching the sun set, when Nyanko-sensei says, quite suddenly, “My words were harsh this afternoon.”

Takashi turns his head to look at him sideways.

“You have to understand, human lives are but mere seconds to us.  A flash of light.”

 

_A flash of light, devastation—_

 

“It is like missing a pet, if you will.”

 

_—a burn of unbridled emotion so pure they could weep—_

 

“Is that how it is?” he says, slow and anaesthetized.  “I don’t think Tsukiyuuno loved Eishige Touka like an owner loved their pet, Sensei.”

 

_Why do we love?_

_We cannot help it..._

 

All his childhood, he’d hoped to live a solitary life to avoid everything that came with ostracism and the agony of seeing what it could be like to be accepted.  It was a simple desire, he can acknowledge now; he’d feared connections that hurt.  An understandable approach.

Well, he’s not alone now.  Not only is he accompanied by youkai, he is now fenced in by humans with ulterior motives too.

Can uncomplicated love be so truly impossible to have?  Love without strings, love without consequence?  Love untwisted by circumstance and politics?

“Maybe,” Nyanko-sensei says.  It takes a moment for Takashi to realize that he’d said his last few thoughts out loud.  “But you have to look for it and keep it so.  You have to make it work.  All relationships are like that.”

“So Matoba Seiji-san was right.  I didn’t stand up strongly to my views when I accepted payment.”

“That man has more than three plots running at the same time.  Don’t take his words at face value.”

“But he’s not wrong,” Takashi says, face numb and mouth too dry.  “It is my fault.  That I made it a transaction.  To help her, to give the names back to youkai—”

“No,” Nyanko-sensei snaps.  “The Book of Friends, it is not of the human world.  It will not obey human logic or human laws.  Don’t conflate your human relationships with it.”

“But my grandmother made this.  And she’s human.”

“Because she can affect the world outside of the human one, Natsume.  All humans can, for better or for worse.  It is just that you, like Reiko, have more potential than most.  That is all.”

“I don’t understand,” he repeats, helplessly, as though the tide is sweeping him down and away.  “So it’s inevitable that I have to make them come for me?  As an exchange so they can get their name back?”

“Can you go releasing all those names in the book right now?  Let them just go and find their own destinations?  No.  You must know who it is who is asking for their names back first.  You cannot return something that was not theirs to begin with, no matter how much of your breath or your saliva you put into it.  This is a condition of exchange amongst the youkai.  This has nothing to do with power or sentiment.  It is not a _choice_ , as your humans like to make of it.

“You humans like to make things your fault when they never were.  Don’t take up what was never yours to begin with.  This is the same.  Do you understand?”

“But Matoba—”

“Matoba can insinuate as much as he likes about it being your fault, and he will be wrong,” Nyanko-sensei growls.  “Did you choose to make her pay?  No.  She gave it to you of her own free will.  If she is from the Eishige family I know of, it would have been fair market value, and affordable besides for an old branch family like hers.  And if you didn’t accept, she would have had it shipped to you under your name.”

“But he’s not wrong, Sensei.  There is always a price to pay...”  Always.  The Fujiwara have not set theirs, and they are rare in this world.  Here, time flows steadily and without strange stretching or gaps, and Takashi will do anything to keep it this way.  Elsewhere...

“Equivalent exchange is not that clear cut, Natsume.  Both parties have to know enough to agree to a price, without being forced into agreeing.”

“That's not fair.  The other party can be hurt so easily.”

“Yes.  It’s not fair.  There are many people who can’t be responsible for unfair deals, because they don’t know enough, or don’t have the power to resist.  Like the ignorant.  Like children.”

His breath hitches despite himself.

Nyanko-sensei watches him steadily.  “None of the exchanges you started were inequitable to the other party, Natsume.  You learn, and you become better at making them.  You did not offer bad deals.  If it was unfair, then it wasn’t your fault.”

Takashi curls up, firming his mouth in an effort not to let it tremble.  Nyanko-sensei shifts, power rushing through the bedroom, and suddenly he is smothered with white fur and an all-encompassing, rumbling warmth.

“It wasn’t your fault, it never was, and it never will be.  Stop worrying about it, Natsume.  Worry more about when I will finally eat you.”

“I still don’t think I will be very delicious,” Takashi mumbles reflexively, and wrinkles his nose when he is rewarded with a mouthful of fine fur.  “You’d better worry about indigestion more.”

Nyanko-sensei snorts. It is a very peculiar sensation, being surrounded by his snorting. Takashi buries down into the heat, and lets the clocks stop as he drifts off to the gentle thunder of Nyanko-sensei’s purr.

 

\-----

 

He wakes to Touko-san’s voice and the great sucking vacuum of Nyanko-sensei’s transformation.  “Takashi-kun, it’s time for dinner.  Come down.”

Takashi rubs at his eyes, still feeling as though he is spun from glass and hoarfrost, as though the seconds and minute are tripping off-beat to his senses.  “Coming.”  Nyanko-sensei hasn’t stopped purring; he is a vibrating weight on his chest, eyes closed and ears relaxed.  Loath to let go, Takashi picks him up and walks downstairs with the oozing lump in his arms.

“Tanuma-kun and Tooru-chan called earlier this afternoon asking for you, so— oh!” Touko-san looks over him with an alarmed concern that makes him ache. “Takashi-kun, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.  I’m just tired.”

She frowns at him, then turns to scoop rice from the cooker.  “Come eat, then, and go to bed early.  I’ll make sure you have a nutritious lunch tomorrow.”

Takashi nods, then replies verbally when he remembers that she can’t see.  She can’t—

Touko-san places the bowl in front of him.  “Eat as much as you can, all right?  We have seconds.”

Despite himself, he feels his eyes prickle.  Nyanko-sensei’s purring picks up volume, and he hugs him tight despite his best efforts.

The faint rustles of movement cease.  Then, faint pressure alights on his shoulder. “Takashi-kun,” Touko-san says gently, worriedly.  And touches him, very lightly, on his head.  A slow, affectionate stroke through his hair, as though he were much younger and she his life-long mother whom he’d never had to leave.  Her silence is deliberate, and so soothing that his breath hitches with it.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes into Nyanko-sensei’s fur.

“What for?” she replies, soft.

“I— I wish I was a better person.”

“You are everything we have ever wanted.”  Her voice is steady, a rock upon which to build a foundation.  “I know we are not demonstrative, Shigeru and I.  It is not the Japanese way.  But we do not want, and have not ever wanted, you to be different from who you are.  We do not need you to change for us, Takashi-kun.”

He thinks about Eishige Umeka, bowing to the weight of exorcist rules even as she tries to find a path through them; about Matoba Seiji, balancing the clan duties of his position with the power secured by the sacrifice of his right eye; about Eishige Touka and Tsukiyuuno, letting go and holding on and finding within themselves what they are willing to give up for what they want.

He thinks about Taki and Tanuma, sacrificing their afternoons to hover in the background as they watch him gather information; about Nishimura and Kitamoto, seeking him out repeatedly, his odd behaviours and all. He thinks about Shigeru-san’s voice stretching through his dreams in the hospital, about Touko-san’s patience day in and day out.

He thinks his head hurts.  But not as badly as his chest, weak with the releasing pain from Touko-san’s touch.

“I’ll keep trying to be better, Touko-san.  I promise.”

“I’m proud of you, Takashi-kun.  And we won’t leave you alone as you grow, for as long as you’ll have us.”

 

_This is our second chance.  I won’t let go this time.  I won’t..._

 

She lets Takashi grab her hand, and they hold on together in the acceptance of an unconditional household, until the seconds regain coherency and he can breathe again.

This, too, is a form of peace, unexchangeable, timeless, priceless. And he won’t let go, either.

 

 

 

_-fin-_

**Author's Note:**

> Themes of trauma from past child neglect that are mentioned and/or explored in the fic include (but may not be limited to):
> 
>   * mild dissociation during psychologically or emotionally taxing moments
>   * transactional nature of relationships
>   * mild abandonment complex
> 



End file.
